Category: All About Guns
I’ve warned you guys. Weird things happen in gunfights. You should expect an Elbonian satellite to fall on your head, or a gopher the size of a grizzly to erupt from the ground at your feet. I’ve encouraged you to believe your eyes, shrug off bizarre twists, and stay focused on the threat. Some of you shared your own stories of bizarre “moments ’midst mayhem,” and a whole bunch of you asked for real-world examples. A few readers were even dubious about the possibility of such strange happenings happenin’. So, for you doubting Thomases, here are some examples from my private stock.
NUCLEAR .38 SPECIAL ROUNDS?
I was a rookie patrolman when my senior partner and I were called to back up a pair of robbery detectives. They planned to kick in a door at a felon-filled flophouse hotel, crunch some cockroaches and yank a sleepy stickup-shooting suspect outta his grimy sheets. His room was on the second floor of this converted century-old residence, and a rickety stairway led directly from his crib down to a garbage-littered lot. That’s where Davey and I were posted — just in case Plan A went South when the “dicks” kicked the front door. It did.
We weren’t quite “positioned” when multiple muffled gunshots preceded Hairball Harry’s rapid exit out onto the landing. There was a flash of light as the door banged hard against the rail, and both Davey and I thought it was a muzzle flash and gunshot. Davey was standing in front of me with his trusty 6″ S&W Model 10 aimed at Harry. He squeezed (or jerked) the trigger — and the stairway landing seemed to explode, with a hurricane of splinters and dust billowing out toward us as simultaneously, the entire stairway screeched, groaned, and collapsed to the deck.
I pushed past Davey when a second after that, a ground-floor back door flew open and two skivvie-clad bed-headed dudes with pistols in their mitts staggered outside, blinded by the clouds of dust, shouting stuff like “COPS! They’re usin’ grenades!” and searching for targets. Using some ungentlemanly language, I convinced ’em of the inferiority of their tactical situation. Good thing they didn’t fight — my partner was still standing there, frozen, with his revolver a hand’s-breadth from his nose, staring incredulously at the muzzle. He was lost in his own world, wondering how a lead 158 gr. SWC could blow up a stairway and two landings. Finally, I had to grab the gun and gently awaken him.
The gunshots were Hairball Harry’s response to his door gettin’ kicked. The dicks had sidestepped, and were occupied with straightening out a pair of pucker-factor-induced “wedgies.” That flash was the bulb of an outside light’s last gasp as its fuse blew out. The once-heavy wooden beams and planks of that stairway were virtually hollow shells filled with a century’s worth of termites and wood-powder. It simply imploded under Harry’s weight. He was unconscious, suffering multiple injuries, snoozin’ in the wreckage.
The Big Diff between me an’ Davey was that previous combat experience had taught me stuff blows up and weird things happen in gunfights, and you have to keep your head in the game.
ALLEYWAY ANTICS
A patrolman pal of mine had an armed dope dealer cornered in an inky-black blind alley. They were casually trading occasional shots, waitin’ for backup to arrive, when suddenly a huge supernova light came on, a door swung open, and the alley was instantly filled with laughing, leaping, twirling cheerleaders, complete with pompoms, ponytails, big bells on their shoes and those cute little kick-skirts. Dudes! Wanna talk weird here? The entire pep-an’-cheer outfit from a local college had just finished a late photo-session on a theatre stage. The best part? As the cheerleaders danced an’ advanced down the alley past my pal, the dope-dealer tried to sneak out with ’em!
“Unbelievable,” my buddy told me; “Here’s this dreadlocked dude wearing a Rastafarian cap and a filthy M-65 (field jacket), skipping along between cheerleaders, still holding a Beretta 92 in one hand. Skipping!” Rasta-man didn’t get away, and nobody got hurt, but my pal said it was an ugly scene. “The shrieking and screaming hurt my ears worse than the gunshots did,” he said. “Never jump out from behind a dumpster and point a pistol anywhere near a buncha cheerleaders.”
DON’T SHOOT WHITEY: HE’S MINE!
“Tommy D,” another badge-wearing brother, is well known for his morbid fear of dogs. They tend to bite him, fiercely and frequently. He had chased a biker bad guy into the back yard and the two were faced off pointing pistols at each other, when outta the shadows waddled an irritated overweight Welsh Corgi, who commenced chewing Tommy’s ankle.
Distracted but undaunted, Tommy and Biker Bill continued discussing whom oughtta throw down whose howitzer when suddenly, a little white Pit Bull pup ran between Biker Bill’s legs and skidded to a snarling stop in front of Tommy. That’s when I arrived — just in time to slap leather and watch in horror as T.D.’s eyes saucered and his shaking gun dropped to point at the Pit Bull!
I was a half-second short of blasting Biker Bill when he flung his gun to the grass and screamed, “Don’t shoot Whitey! He’s mine!” I’ll leave the detailed analysis to you guys. Just watch out for grizzly-gophers and Elbonian satellites, okay?
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Maybe someday?
Top: Webley Mark VI .455. Bottom: Enfield No. 2 .38.
The British have never been ones to march in lockstep with the rest of the world, and a little evidence of that is their choice of handguns in World War II. While most of the world’s major military forces had by that time converted to one sort or another of autoloader, the British decided to stick with revolvers.
Mostly they used four types of double action revolver, although in 1940 the British government even bought some Colt Single Action Army revolvers to help arm their home guard. (Today collectors refer to those as “Battle of Britain” guns.) Issued to regular British forces, however, were their domesticly manufactured Enfield No. 2 .38 and Webley Mark VI .455. The Webley Mark VI .455 had been adopted in 1916, and although it had been officially replaced about 1928 by the Enfield No. 2 .38, it was still in common use.
Top: S&W Hand Ejector No. 2 .455. Bottom: S&W Military & Police .38.
Not having enough of either Webley or Enfield to go around, they also bought many thousands of S&W K-frame Military & Police revolvers chambered for the .38 S&W cartridge. And furthermore, they still had and consequently used many S&W N-frame (Hand Ejector 2nd Models) which they had purchased from 1915 to1917 for World War I.
Duke’s S&W Hand Ejector #2 .455 factory letters to the Canadian Government in 1916.
Left to Right: .38 S&W with 190 gr. lead RN, .455 Webley Fiocchi load with 262 gr. lead RN bullet and .45 ACP Black Hills load with 230 gr. FMJ bullet.
Their choice of cartridges for these revolvers also seems strange. The .455 Webley had been with them since the 1870s as a black powder cartridge, but their Mark II version of it introduced about 1897 was loaded with smokeless propellant. By American standards, it would be considered “barely loaded.” That’s because it was rated with 265 gr. bullet at only about 600 fps. In the 1920s the British military determined a .38 caliber 200 grain bullet at about 630 fps gave about the same muzzle energy, and that’s what they converted to. Actually the case they chose to use was a twin to the .38 S&W round. That company had been chambering guns for it since the early 1870s, so when the Brits needed S&W to help them out with revolvers in the 1940s.
I’ve been told by a knowledgeable shooter/collector that prior to WWII the Brits had to reduce bullet weight on their .38s to 178 grains in order to make them full metal jacketed. Otherwise they would have been in violation to the Geneva Convention.
The Brit .38s and .455s barely dented. The big caved-in spot was done with a .45 ACP.
No Common Sense
For some strange reason, probably related to my lack of common sense, my gun trading forays these last few years have netted me samples of the four above mentioned British military revolvers. Two have some minor noteworthiness. The Enfield No. 2 .38 is marked “RAF” (Royal Air Force) and “1936,” while the S&W .455 factory letters to the Canadian government in 1916. I was even able to find a 12-round box of FMJ .455 military loads of Canadian manufacture dated 1943 to go with it. British military .38 loads have evaded me completely. For shooting I bought some of the Fiocchi .455 Webley factory loads with a 262-gr. lead bullet and handloaded some Lyman #358430 cast bullets weighing 190 gr. in the .38. Powder charge was only 2.2 grains of Bullseye. The Fiocchi .455s chronographed at 619 fps, and my .38 handloads were 10 fps faster.
So did I “test-fire” these revolvers for accuracy as any self-respecting gun’riter would do? No way. What I did was spent nine bucks at an Army surplus store for an old GI issue steel helmet. Then I set it on a fence post and fired my British WWII revolvers at it from 10 paces. The .38s wouldn’t have even given its wearer a headache. They didn’t dent it and hardly made it wobble. The .455s did dent it and it wobbled some. Admittedly these were lead bullets and not military FMJs, which might have given more penetration. For comparison, I fired a 230 grain FMJ .45 ACP factory load from a Colt 1917 revolver. It didn’t penetrate either but caved in the side of the helmet, and not only knocked it off the fence post but rolled it 20 yards down the road!
Somebody probably knows why the Brits stuck to revolvers in the years leading up to WWII, and even perhaps why they liked such pee-dunkler cartridges — I don’t. But they’re still interesting handguns, albeit only minor historical footnotes to WWII.
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Cimarron Model 71
